Can I Completely Disable User Access Control (UAC) in Windows 8?

User Access Control (UAC), the controversial widely being criticized ever since it’s firstly introduced in Vista, is actually a key security technology that plays in a key role to improve the security of Microsoft Windows by limiting application in a sandbox environment that only has standard user privilege. in Windows 8, it’s also required for WinRT-based application to run. It’s a cool and useful technology but even though the number of prompts have been reduced in late Windows, including Windows 7 and Windows 8, many still don’t really like it.

In Windows 8, you have 4 levels to choose how often you will be getting notified about the changes made to your computer, from Never to very often. When the setting is set to the lowest level, Never notify, UAC is actually disabled.

However, if you think sliding down the setting will get UAC completely disabled, you are wrong. So the short answer to the question of this post is NO.

The setting Never notify just removes any prompts that may pop up to the user. Behind the scene, UAC still plays the key role guiding the system from being any unauthorized access. It’s just when the setting is set to Never notify, it happens automatically when an application requests privilege elevation. It’s important that UAC is still available even though it’s been told never notify because if an application doesn’t ask for elevation, it will fail to run.

However, Microsoft still left a back door in registry that really disables UAC from even being running quietly. Since UAC is a highly recommended key technology in Windows, I won’t be sharing it and even though you somehow know how, I will strongly against it.